As everyone is already aware, I set 2014 to be my year for an intense writing challenge. In the past, I’ve put together 30-day writing challenges intended to help build bodies of content for new blogs.
I’d usually pick a 31-day month for the challenge. It gave everyone involved at least one day they could slip – a holiday, a sick day, a much-needed day off. The objective wasn’t to drive new writers into the ground, it was to help people build up a wealth of content and establish daily habits of both writing and publishing their content.
This year, I decided to push myself even further with daily writing. Instead of 30 days with the potential of a skip day, I wanted to push for 365 consecutive days of content. A new post of at least 300 words every single day for a year. We’ve a week and two months to go, and thus far I’ve kept pace with my objective.
So let’s spice it up a bit.
NaNoWriMo
A close friend of mine introduced me to the National Novel Writing Month challenge in college. The goal is to write a new, 50,000-word story in one month. There isn’t a daily publishing requirements, just length and time requirements.
I failed in my first attempt back in 2002, mostly because I lacked discipline. I tried again in 2009, finally taking the time to schedule daily writing into my routine. I managed to pull of a 50,000+ word novel within the month, and subsequently published in in 5,000-word chunks on this site.
In 2010 I tried but failed to get past the first few chunks of writing, so I regrouped in 2011 with a team of writers. I challenged the Boy Scout unit I worked with to join and complete the challenge. To my surprise and excitement, one Scout joined and completed a novel in under a month!
This year, I’ve decided to make yet another attempt at writing a novel in a month – this time pulling along a few coworkers as I delve into the insanity that defines a rapid-writer’s routine. The blog will still feature new content every day, but hopefully with several thousand additional words of fiction as I go.
As I work towards my objective, I’ll publish chunks here as I go – assuming they’re relevant to the other content on the site.
