It's that time of year, when people's thoughts begin to turn up NaNoWriMo. Mine do not, because I'm pretty confident that I can't write a 50k word first draft and have a full-time job at the same time. I'm aware other people have done it but, as I understand it, it involves economising on sleep in a way that is extremely detrimental to Elizabeths.

However, I'm always up for a writing challenge, and I welcome the accountability that comes with such things. In other words: I'm about to try and manufacture a series of artificial deadlines to prod myself into arranging more words into stories.

Besides, haven't you been thinking that there just aren't enough of those month portmanteau words (portmontheaus?) and that we should invent a few more?

Accordingly, I declare it to be imminently Drabbletober. During October, I'll be attempting to write (and post here) a drabble every day.

A drabble?

Yup. A drabble is a story consisting of exactly 100 words. I wrote about my approach to writing drabbles, and how much fun they are, a few months ago.

I'll be attempting to write and post one a day through October. In an attempt to foster a daily writing practice, I will be taking this literally... No stacking up spare drabbles at weekends. Strictly one new idea, written up as a hundred word story, per day. Will I manage to keep this up for the whole month? Stick around to find out!

I'll be tweeting about this using the hashtag #drabbletober, and would be absolutely delighted if anyone else chose to join in. Write one, or write one every day. Share it, or keep it to yourself.