No more excuses

I've taken a long enough hiatus from my blogs to focus on "real life" and I'm sick of it.

Yes I'm still writing, and I have been rather busy planning a wedding, getting married, raising a puppy etc, but every day I think "I should write a quick blog post." But never do.
I have hundreds of posts in the dusty corners of my brain but they're not as much use to me there than they would be sharing them with friends, family and strangers online.

A few months ago I created a group on Facebook called W.A.C- Weekly Art Club, where I post small weekly assignments for the members of the group to complete however they interpret it. It's just a small weekly thing for people who love to doodle, draw, paint or take pictures to keep up their skills and share their work. I love it. I've missed completing a couple assignments myself, and have missed posting tasks in a timely manner, but I'm getting better and the group is having some really positive feedback.

I kept talking about W.A.C with my husband, and he said he wanted something similar so that he could improve his writing skills. He liked the idea of being responsible for your own work, but also keeping up with something as a group. Committing to something and doing it.

Out of a desire for something, he came up with an idea and challenged me to it. It's called Duelling Amateurs. The idea is that we will write something, anything, everyday for one year. 365 days of writing. We can write poems, short stories, descriptions, reviews, articles, biographies, plot lines, a haiku, anything we want, as long as we write something.

I think it's a brilliant idea. Everyday I write a little blurb in a journal about one of my stories, but now I'll actually have an excuse to share them, get feedback on them and improve my work.

I will be posting everything I write on this blog, or placing a link to it here. For example, when I have a review I have written for the movie and TV review site ALTERNATE SCREEN, instead of rewriting it here I will make a blog post with a link to that site. I will also try to remember to put DA. somewhere in the title of the post if I am considering it part of the challenge.

I hope you follow me along this journey. I know my husband Jason and I and one of our friends Alex have committed to Duelling Amateurs and we're excited to see where it takes us!

Our 365 days start February 11th, 2014.

-Brandolyn

If you could commit to doing something everyday for an entire year what would it be?

What's stopping you?