Everybody loves (or at least loves to hate) a list. This is especially true around the end of the year, when our inclination to rank things and to build coherent narratives out of the chaos of loosely-related events goes into overdrive.
For this week’s challenge, I invite you to breathe new life into the established genre of the end-of-year countdown list. Sure, you’re welcome to share your top-20 books, songs, or obscure craft beers of the year. But you could also try something a bit different. For example:
- Use the countdown format to tell a story, using dates, places, or names of people for each bullet point.
- Create a list-based photo essay on any topic you feel passionate about.
- Put together a roundup of your blog’s top posts of the year (you can use your own criteria, of course), and use excerpts from each one to showcase your strongest writing. (If you feel even more adventurous, structure the list in a way that suggests a narrative, or some other sort of continuity.)
- Write a glossary of all the new buzzwords/terms you learned this year, ranking them from least to most annoying (this can work for other cultural artifacts, obviously).
- Share a list of your favorite bloggers from the past year — including, ideally, a link to a powerful post from each one.
These are just a few ideas to get you going — you’re encouraged to come up with your own twist on the countdown theme.
I look forward to reading your posts in 10, 9, 8, 7…
