It’s almost February and you know what that means: time to contemplate failed relationships!

Ok, perhaps not universally. But for many, the month that contains Valentine’s Day can be a reminder not of love, but of love lost. I’m a V-Day fan, personally, but as an introspective fella, I understand the impulse.

So that’s leg one of the inspiration for this. Leg two is my other website Tim Stevens’s The January Project. There, for the entire month of January, I would write an original piece a day—it could be prose, a monologue, some dialogue, a poem…whatever—inspired by a song chosen at random from our music collection. Now maybe this is as much about me as it is about music, but I quickly found that a lot of songs pull for stories of love lost, break-ups, ugly fights…these sorts of things. I found myself having to avoid writing entries about such things because I wanted to offer more varied topics, approaches, and so on. However, it meant tossing some ideas I really did like in the trash.

Which brings us here, to Breaking Up to A Beat. I thought to myself, “Well, I’d really like to use some of those ideas, but they don’t belong all in The January Project. Maybe another ‘project?’ But I don’t want to bore people, so…What to do?”

Breaking Up to A Beat is the answer. My idea is this: make the whole month about bad love, love ending, love gone wrong, but don’t make it all about my writing. I will still be writing a lot of the entries—or several, at least—but I’m bringing in other writers to give different voices to the site. So instead of a month of ho-hum Tim Stevens, it’s a month of various authors choosing songs about love in its negative forms and writing their own unique pieces inspired by those tunes. AND! To make things really interesting, it’s a contest. The prize is piddling, a $25 Amazon Gift Card, but it is a contest nonetheless.

And that is where you, the mighty reader, come in. First, do you know a writer who’s looking for a challenge? Send them my way at tim[dot]g[dot]stevens[at]gmail[dot]com and I’ll get them on the “list.” Second, when the month is done, you all will vote for the one you like best and whoever that is gets a hot little Amazon gift card. It really is just that simple.

So spread the word, send writers my way, and be back here on February 1 for our first entry!

Reach out and touch me at tim.g.stevens@gmail.com or @ungajje on the Twitter. Let me know what you love and what you hate. And please, do spread the word.