30 Day Writing Challenge
This November, we ran a 30 Day Writing Challenge. Unlike some other writing challenges that happen in November (ahem), the goal wasn’t to write a novel, 50,000 words, or even 5,000 words. The goal was to get into the habit of writing daily.
I’m the first to admit that daily writing feels like a huge challenge. It’s so easy to say I’m too busy, or even worse, I’m not inspired. The number of times I’ve heard people say but I just don’t have anything to write about …
That’s why a writing challenge like this one is so great. Each day, we shared new prompts on our socials. Some of them were general, some more specific, and some even suggested taking a break (extra points for rest!). I always like to think of these kinds of prompts as sparks, or that little nudge you need to sit down and write.
The first prompt of the month was inspired by Natalie Goldberg (Writing Down the Bones) and suggested using the opener ‘I am looking at.’ The beauty of a prompt like this is that you get to use whatever you have around you as your material. For example, I’m sitting in my kitchen as I write this. I’ve got a cup of water (mostly empty), a plate and knife leftover from breakfast, my phone, a food magazine, and the rest of the table is covered with advent calendars and dirty dishes. Yes, I’m aware I need to clean. But after I’ve finished describing what I’m looking at, I might focus on an aspect of the scene: why haven’t I cleaned up after breakfast? What are the advent calendars doing on the table? Why is my phone sitting next to me? And just like that, you have the potential to write a story about someone waiting for a phone call, or the last advent calendar of your childhood, or even a stalemate between flatmates because no one can be bothered to clean up the dishes.
Magic.
You can start a writing challenge whenever, wherever. You can set a word goal (or not) or even just decide that you want to spend ten minutes a day focused on writing. You don’t even need to do a prompt every day. Just try getting through all of them. I guarantee you’ll be surprised by how much you end up writing!
We’ve collected all of the remaining writing prompts on our socials, so feel free to return to them whenever you need a little creative nudge.
A Few Other Writing Challenges to try:
A Month of Daily Prompts from National Writing Project
365 Daily Writing Prompts from The Narrative Arc (random prompt generator)