Published in New City’s summer guide!
May 26, 2010
By Daniel Prazer
A year ago last weekend, I walked across the stage and got my master’s degree in writing from Columbia College. Cranking away at a book-length manuscript tends to burn you out, a condition I referred to as the post-post-graduate writing hangover.
Less than a month later, my father took his own life. For the next few months, I sank deeper into the couch cushions.
Momentum—or the lack of it—took over my writing life. When I finally emerged from my suicide-survivor’s exile, the only words I put down on the page were cover letters to go with a redesigned resume. Nothing creative.
Until this summer, when a former professor and friend, Sam Weller, threw down this gauntlet on his Facebook wall: “I am going to write 500 words a day, every day, until the end of August. This will give me a 53,000-word draft of a novel by the end of summer. Anyone care to join me in this challenge? It’s just two pages a day.”
