A few years ago I found this site that I was sure would push me to write more.  I kept up with it for a whopping nine days.  I’m sure my rapid retreat from this exercise was due to a few things.

First of all, it was January.  It’s a month that starts off slowly here, and then suddenly it’s galloping at breakneck speeds.  I’m pretty sure that was a first-string factor in my defection.  Secondly, I think I ran out of things to say.  It’s not that I used up all my words.  I just used them up on the topic at hand in the constraints of the exercise.

The goal was to write as many words as there were days that you’d been practicing this exercise.  For example, on day one–I was limited to one word.  On day 703, I would’ve written 703 words.  It was a good way to start.  It forces word choice to be more precise.  After all, on day three I was limited to three words.

The site recently shut down.  They sent me a notice to save my words somewhere else if I wanted to keep them.  I’d actually forgotten all about those words.  I printed them before they disappeared into the realms of cyberspace.  Soon after their commitment to ink and paper, they were lost in the morass of paper that is my desk.  I found them today.  I decided to commit them to this corner of cyberspace lest they be swallowed by my desk forevermore.

Day 1      Missing.

Day 2      It’s gone.

Day 3      I need it.

Day 4      Was it ever here?

Day 5      Is it possible to miss,

Day 6      miss something you’ve never had? Longing

Day 7      is one thing. Longing and missing aren’t

Day 8      necessarily synonymous. Can I really miss something I’ve

Day 9     only longed for and never had? I think so.

And there it is–my one more word.  It seems fitting I rediscovered it on my desk on the eve of Valentine’s Day.  However, that dissection is for another day.

What have you thought was a good idea only to quickly abandon it?

photo of paper, pen and hand courtesy of brianloc on rgbstock.com; words and heart added on picnik.com