Sketchtember

Last year at this time, I had been working seriously on writing comedy sketches for a little while. I had not produced any, or if I had it was a couple. I was managing to write two or three sketches a week, counting both new sketches as well as new drafts of sketches I'd written before. I became aware of a thing some other writers were doing called "National Sketch Writing Month". You write thirty sketches during the month of September.

I decided to get into it. You can write longer sketches, but short ones called "blackout sketches" also count. I don't much like doing those, I suppose because it feels like I'm cutting corners. It feels like I'm not really writing a sketch. Every time I sit down to write what is in my mind a sketch, I aim to hit three pages, and if it insists on being a page or two longer, I let it, but I won't let it be under three typically. I think almost all of my sketches in September of last year were about three.

I decided to do the exercise again this year. I feel good about my chances of achieving it, though after my success last year I thought I could easily do a similar month-long event for novels, and that didn't go so well. In fact, I conceived an idea but never wrote a word, and I felt awfully bad about that. This year for this event however, I'm off to a fine start. In the first two days of the month, I wrote three sketches, obviously putting me ahead of the curve.

I suspect I'll manage to hit the target again this year, but I hope that the month's end doesn't see me doing what I did last year, which was letting my production of sketches come to almost a complete halt. I wrote thirty sketches in September, and then wrote perhaps five or so in the months between then and now. It was rather unfortunate, but this year I mean to keep my momentum going, perhaps even at the same rate.