Thursday, November 01, 2007

45 x 365 - An Introduction


I ran across the x365 writing exercise about six weeks ago, and thought it was wonderful and inspiring and intimidating all at the same time. The original concept is fairly simple: take your age, limit yourself to that many words, and write about one person per day, for 365 days. But it has to be a person you have met (no six degrees of Kevin Bacon here), and whose name you remember.

I'm a little worried about thinking of 365 people (no, I haven't made the dreaded list yet), but hopefully once I get started it will prompt more memories. Not all the stories will be happy ones, nor will they all be sad or dramatic. Just like life, people float in and out and leave different impressions. Some are deep. Others, not so much.

Although I'm in between birthdays, I've chosen 45 as my number of choice. It might be my age, or it might be the rpm speed of old singles. I'm wondering how difficult it will be to limit myself to 45 words. As I start out, I'll be interested to see how many times I have to rewrite an entry to conform to the word limit. I do tend to run on just a bit.

Finally, I've waited until today to start this little exercise because November 1st is All Saints Day, which is a day of remembrance. Since I'm not going to wait another seven months for my birthday, beginning this journey on All Saints Day seems very fitting.

45 words
365 days
365 people
1 life touched

Wish me luck.

1 comment:

Scoobers said...

Luck! And welcome to *x365.

~Kathy