The year 2009 was supposed to be an easy year for Shawn Farley, a local musician who performs solo as well as with the rock band Half Zaftig. The only obstacle he had to face was turning 40 years old on November 9, but he decided to mark the milestone by challenging himself in a way he never had before—he set out to write one song every week for a year. He called the project 5240 (representing the 52 songs for the year he turned 40, natch), and he had only one rule—each song had to be posted by midnight every Sunday night.

He announced his plans to friends and family and set up a blog at www.shawnfarley .com to keep track of his progress. He missed his first deadline, but only by 10 minutes. On Monday, January 5, 2009, at 12:10 a.m. he posted his first song, a quick and aggressive pop number called "Help Is on the Way," which he cowrote with his Half Zaftig bandmates, Lizzy Daymont and Pete Johnston. The song, only a minute and a half long, doesn't have much in the way of verses, but it's still a solid track, reminiscent of a crunchier, more assertive Super Deluxe. 5240 had officially begun.

This idea of harsh, self-imposed deadlines isn't new to the music world—a quick Google search proves that there have been many musicians, some professional, some amateur, who've attempted the same sort of projects (and of course, a new ambitious batch popped up just weeks ago at the start of 2010). But for Farley, the idea of writing songs and sharing them with the world within a matter of days (in some cases, hours) was very new.

In the past, whether writing songs for himself or with his band, Farley's artistic process has been notoriously slow. He'd obsess over the smallest nuances in each song so much that he has gone over a year without finishing anything at all. That all of his releases have been strictly DIY tends to further delay results.

"When you pay for everything yourself," he says, "you pay for things when you have the money. It drove me crazy that it would take five years for a song I wrote to come out. I really wanted to see if I could release some music that I was excited about while I was still excited about it."

At first, Farley was feeling good about the possibilities of the project and confident that he'd finish. Week two brought "Squandered All My Time," a dreamy, almost Christmassy electronic number; week three was the quiet acoustic track "The Last Time We Talked"; week four's song, "Lake Water (Hot and Cold)" showcased the songwriter's darker, moodier side. Each song took an unexpected step in the opposite direction from the song before as Farley experimented with all the different ways he could fill the 365 days.

"The bands I grew up loving—the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, XTC—if you listen to their albums, they're cohesive but also so different. Take Oranges & Lemons by XTC. Every song is wildly different, even though it has a sound that's theirs. That's the kind of music I still gravitate to now, when I find it. I miss people trying to push themselves into places that people don't expect them to go. I'm a big fan of the Frank Zappas of the world. He said, 'A song is whatever I put a frame around.' And I like to subscribe to that."

With four songs down, Farley had successfully made it through the first month, and then he made it through the next month, and then the next. But in April, the ride stopped being so smooth.

When Farley first started preparing for the project, in late 2008, he had just been laid off from his job in the software industry. At first, the extra time his unexpected unemployment allowed him seemed like a gift—he had some savings, and it's not like he didn't have 52 songs to write or anything—but after spending many months job hunting and not getting so much as a callback, he became increasingly frustrated. He was only one third of the way into the project when he had to pack up everything and move to a more affordable apartment. And as anyone who's had to move will tell you, it's a time-consuming, frustrating, absolute pain in the ass—and that's without having to find time to write, record, and master a song over the weekend.

The year's surprises didn't stop there.

"It was a very challenging year," he says, letting out a sigh. "I had people in my family die, a dog died—it seemed like anything that could go wrong did. You can hear it in some of the songs. It gets pretty bleak at some points.

"If I had known the kind of stuff I was going to have to face and the stress levels I would have—losing my job, having to move—I wouldn't have done it," he admits. "I thought 2009 was gonna be a quiet year!"

But even in the darker days, Farley made time for his deadlines.

"There were moments when I was rationalizing to myself why I could stop. I knew there'd be people who would be supportive, but I knew I wouldn't forgive myself if I quit. So that's when you give yourself permission to write 12-second songs," he laughs. "Hey, if They Might Be Giants did it..."

It was in these moments, when he felt like giving up, that Farley really began to learn what he's capable of as a songwriter, and the project became more than just a silly self-imposed challenge.

One song, "Inappropriate," was written in a moment of creative desperation—the deadline was looming and Farley felt he had nothing to work with.

"You'd be amazed at what happens when you have no ideas," he laughs. "For whatever reason, the Beatles song 'Mother Nature's Son' from the White Album was in my head all week. So I said, 'Here's what I'm gonna do: I'm gonna replicate this arrangement exactly—the verse, chorus, verse, bridge, etc.—and build another song on top of that.' So I did, and I ended up with a song I'm really happy with, just because I didn't know what else to do!

"I learned that, and this is probably the thing with all creative people—actors, writers, whatever—all of us look at that empty page and think, 'Oh God, what if I'm never able to do something good ever again?' But if I force myself to sit and do something, I will come up with something."

Farley came up with something 52 times over, in fact—he posted his last song on January 4, 2010, just one day before the end of his allotted 365 days. Farley doubled the size of his overall song catalog, which had taken at least two decades to build, in just one year. Some of the contributions are long (seven-plus minutes), others are short (under a minute); some feature his friends, others are just him playing solo. Some have traditional pop song structures, while others are more experimental, toying with combinations of metal, rock, and electronic music.

"It's weird to be outside of it now," he says with a grin, just days after finishing his final track. "I exceeded my own expectations. Obviously there are some songs I like more than others, but there is something I like about all of them." He lets out a chuckle. "Whatever it was that made me labor so obsessively on every nuance before, I think I might've let that go a little bit."

Go to www.shawnfarley.com to listen to all 52 of his songs. He's also posted his favorite 20 tracks, should you want the abridged version.