Friendly's proudly welcomes you to Deliciousville. Population? You. (photo from menuism.com)

For those of you new to this little thing-a-ma-jig (not to be confused with the wonderfully tasty Friendly's sandwich, the Fishamajig) I wanted to give a refresher course before we get started. The quick and dirty of it all, if you will. And if you won't, well...look, if you don't buy in now this is going to be a very long month.

The January Project, on a very basic level, is a personal writing challenge I'm sharing with all of you. Once a day, every day, for the month, I create one piece of original fiction.

It can be poetry, short story, script, or something else entirely. A pretend news article? All the time, in fact. A letter between two fictional people? Been there, yes. A highly suggestive interpretive dance? Sure! An ode to 1996’s BATMAN AND ROBIN? No. Never that.

But anyone can engage in daily short fiction projects, right? Well, I am not sure ANYONE can, but I see your point. It hurts, but I see your point. No worries, though, I anticipated your thoughtless objections and threw in a twist: every day I randomly select a different song from my musical library, listen to said song, and use that song as a jumping off point for my day’s entry.

For those interested in process, it goes like this:

1.) I use a computer program to randomly select a letter (well actually it is either a letter A-Z, Soundtracks, or Mixes). This is the letter of the name of the artist or band (or it designates to go to the soundtrack or mix sections of the collection).

2.) Then, a randomly selected number, 1-30. This is the number I count to find the album (or mix or soundtrack).

3.) Lastly, another randomly selected number, 1-30. This is the track number on the album.

It sounds more complicated than it is, I promise. I have no problem keeping it straight and neither should you.

Additional rules you might be interested in (but probably won’t or shouldn’t be because, seriously, not that interesting):

1.) I can work on a day’s entry anytime from 12 hours before day through the end of the day. So, for instance, if we are talking about January 5th, I can start working on January 4th at noon.

2.) Provided the entry is finished and posted by the end of said day (11:59 PM) it “counts.”

3.) I cannot do the same song twice in the month. However, I can revisit songs I’ve used in previous Januaries.

4.) Although I can post the story at any point, I am shooting for the day’s entry to hit the site at 10 AM each day. Watch my Twitter feed or endlessly refresh this site with obsessive dedication for the moment it goes live.

In keeping with January Project tradition, January 1st’s entry (that being today’s) is obviously going up late. Say more like 10 PM than 10 AM. Because traditions are important.

Hope to see you back every day and that you enjoy things. Feel free to hit the Twitter feed or the comment section to let me know what you think.

Thanks.