Rules of the Game

Okay, so I've decided to start a blog. I know what you're thinking: "Big deal, who doesn't have a blog these days? Why should I care what this guy has to say." Generally speaking, you shouldn't care. There are already enough blogs out there with people expressing their opinions on a whole range of interesting subjects, many of which do a much better job than I ever could (others are just plain terrible, but that's beside the point).

But this isn't that kind of blog. I'm not coming here to post my opinions on current events, or pop culture, or music, or whatever you crazy kids are up to those days. Instead, I've decided to start this blog as a record of a personal challenge. Recently, I wondered to myself if I could keep up a schedule of reading one short story a day for a full year. I love to read, and I especially love to read fiction, but, until now, I've never really tracked what I have read, and, and least since finishing university, I've rarely responded to what I've read in any kind of formal manner. Personally, I think that's a bit of a shame.

So, starting today, I will attempt to read, and write about, at least one short story a day. But first, I neet to lay some ground rules:

• I will have to read 365 short stories in 365 days, starting today, September 9, 2009.
• I will have to write a blog post about each short story I read. This can include a short review or a musing on an aspect of the story. It's content really isn't as important as is the act of responding itself.
  
• A short story will count as any story of 20,000 words or less. More broadly put, anything that can be read in about an hour.
• Anying under 1,000 words (aka "flash fiction") generally won't count, unless I read a few in on one go (let's say four or more). I don't have anything against flash fiction, but, for the purposes of this challenge, it just seems way too easy to go that route.
  
• Novellettes and Novellas can count if I can finish them in a day, but I doubt that will happen very often, if at all. I don't have that much free time.
• Each story has to be a new story. No rereads.
• The stories must be fiction. For the purposes of the challenge, Memoirs don't count.
  
• My goal is to read one story a day. However, I recognize that life can often get in the way of ideals. As a result, I'm allowing myself to miss days reading and/or writing about a story, as long as I have a good reason (eg: sick, swamped with work, alien invasion, etc. . .), and as long as I make up the deficit before the year is over.

Okay, so that seems to be about it. Time to get to work. I've quite a bit of reading ahead of me.