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Greetings travelers!
Writing is an amazing art form. You create people, worlds, histories, and whole systems of culture and government in your head, convey all of these things through a few symbols on a page, and suddenly this thing that has never existed and will never exist or can never exist is real and tangible and shared with hundreds of other people in the world. That is the beauty of writing.
On the other hand, writing is a mind numbing, soul crushing, infuriating process where you struggle to get the words on the page in just the right order to convey just the right feeling or event or character trait so others will believe and enjoy your work. And by the time you finish a draft, you are so exhausted with this world and its characters that many writers, myself included, almost instantly go onto starting a new project without finishing the first one. If you want evidence of this, you should read my post about all of my incomplete projects.
One way, I have found, to motivate myself to write and complete projects is to participate in different challenges. Most writers are probably familiar with NaNoWriMo in November and the Camp NaNoWriMos in April and July. While these are great in forcing me to write, I also like some variety. So after poking through other Authortuber videos, checking blogs through google search, and with some inspiration from some friends, I have created this list of eight writing challenges that I'm considering trying.
1. NaNoWriMo and Camps
One that I have participated in for several years, National Novel Writing Month happens in November and encourages participants to write 50,000 words in thirty days. Similarly, the camps occur in April and July but these allow you to choose how many words you want to write in the respective months. I've always aimed for 50,000 words just for consistency but I know some people who want to get just 10,000 words and others who aim for 100,000 words. These challenges are pretty standard for writers and non-writers alike.
2. Novel in a Year
This is actually based off of some novel writing software that I saw while exploring the internet. While I have not used the software and can't speak for how well it works, their site does have a progression chart that maps out how many weeks you should aim for when outlining, drafting, and editing in order to have a completed novel by the end of the year. The challenge then, is to see if I can go from story idea to a final edited draft in just 52 weeks. Their chart does not include any beta readers, though, so some adjustment may be necessary. This does sound like a fun thing to try if I decide to start a new project instead of finishing one of my current projects.
3. 365 Create Challenge
This challenge can be adapted to nearly anything. The main goal is to choose either a theme or a "style", in my case creative writing, and do something for that every single day of the year. For this particular challenge, I was thinking of doing Drabble writing every single day.
For those who are unfamiliar, myself included until very recently, Drabble is a style of writing created in the sci-fi fandom in the 1980s. A form of flash fiction, the challenge is to write a complete and concise story in exactly 100 words.
As someone who struggles with short stories, this would be a challenge for me if I were to do this every single day for 365 days.
4. 52 Weeks and 52 Stories
This is a modified version of the 365 challenge. Instead of one short story a day, I would be working on one short story a week. I think I would give myself a little more freedom in the story length with this particular challenge, but it would still be a challenge since I struggle with short stories.
5. 100 Poem Responses
Another once that I have modified slightly from the 365 Challenge. I would choose 100 different poems and then write 100 different responses to those poems either in the style of the original author or borrowing inspiration from their subject matter. I have actually done a few poems like this for college and enjoyed the results, so this may be a fun one to try further.
6. 12 hour or 24 hour Writeathon
Not a long challenge, but still as intense. I would attempt to write for either 12 or 24 hours straight, logging my productivity each hour to see just how productive I can be while working for so long. There are several such writeathons occurring on Youtube every few months, so i would have some support, but I am not sure how well I would do for such long stretches.
7.10k Day
Similar to the 12/24 hour Writeathons, a 10k day is a challenge on your productivity. In this one, I would see if I could write 10,000 words in a single day. I know my current record is 5,000 in a day, so I'm not sure if I could really double that. I know some Authortubers, like KaShay Warren, do these regularly, so I would again have some support.
8. 1MilY
Another year long challenge, this one is another well established challenge online. The goal is to write 1 million words in a single year. Assuming you write every single day, you would only need to write 2,741 words per day. It doesn't sound too bad, I regularly do a little over 2,000 words a day for NaNoWriMo, however I you miss a day the numbers quickly add up (2,741+2,741=5,4,82 words in a single make up day).
I'm not sure I'm crazy enough to try this one just yet but it would certainly be a challenge.
I have not yet decided which of these challenges I want to try, if I'm going to try all of them, just do one for a few months, or if it's going to be a year long challenge. If you have any thoughts on what I should do, or are going to try some yourself, or have tried them and have advice, or know of any other challenges out there that I missed, I' love to hear from you in the comments.
Until next time, travelers.
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