The Countdown To My 500 Stories On Vocal

From Seven Days In To Vocal

When I was writing on Seven Days In (I still am but only a couple of posts a month) my most prolific year was 2019 when I posted 368 times, that is just over one a day, with no possibility of rejection, and no limit on the number of words at all.

Cue The Vocal Temptation and mid April 2021 I started writing for Vocal, so I am just coming up to my first year on Vocal. How many posts have I done?

Four Hundred and Eighty Seven Published with Four awaiting publication, plus this one, making Four Hundred and Ninety Two leaving eight more to be written with sixteen days to go until the first of April.

Buckingham Nicks and Fleetwood Mac

I wanted to integrate the wonderful “Countdown” by Lindsey Buckingham into this piece for obvious reasons. I came across the Buckingham Nicks debut album and always smiled that the male side has a potentially female name and the female side has a potentially male name.

Regardless of that, the album is amazing and you can see why Fleetwood Mac recruited them. When Peter Green left Fleetwood Mac I believe they lost their creative spark and were headed for obscurity. Mick Fleetwood is an excellent drummer, John McVie a great bassist, and Christine McVie a great voice and songwriter. Bob Welch, Bob Weston, and Dave Walker, in my opinion, didn't cut it for me and drafting in Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks lit an amazing fire under the band's songwriting with their eponymous 1975 album hitting number one in the USA followed up by “Rumours” and we all saw what happened there.

What Is Coming?

To be honest, I haven’t a clue, most of my writing is observational with a little fiction and some poetry. I still don’t think I can really write but I do use the stream of consciousness methodology of Bob Dylan and Dylan Thomas although I do not feel I am capable of hitting their heights.

I have tried various poetry forms generally favouring sonnets, villanelles, and various cinquain forms but trying others when the mood hits me. I was wondering if this was going to be a poem, because how could I write six hundred words about how I was going to hit my five hundredth Vocal story.

My Five Hundredth Vocal Story

This has to be something special but if I am going to get it written in time it also needs to be written quickly and those two criteria seem to be mutually exclusive to me. My problem may be that I work alone, and though I have collaborated on some poetry I don’t think anyone would seriously want to work with me, I am someone who is always about but generally avoided.

And The Countdown Begins

I will try to be prepared for when the five hundredth story drops and hope that Vocal doesn’t do their publishing out of order that often happens. It has happened in the past and will no doubt happen once more, but after this, I need eight subjects to get my creative juices flowing. My publishing rate on Vocal is four stories every three days so, in theory, I should be there sometime next week, but we shall see

Concluding The Countdown

This will end with the five hundredth story and then the next target is a thousand. Vocal has been going for a long time but I am not sure they have had a writer as prolific as me but no doubt there is bound to be one.

We shall see.